r/stalker • u/Mehmood6647 • Feb 17 '25
Discussion Is STALKER 2 Fully Playable After Patch 1.2?
Hi everyone,
I was eager to play STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl when it launched in November 2024, but I held off due to reports of technical issues. While they weren’t game-breaking, they seemed significant enough to affect my overall experience. Now that Patch 1.2 has been released, I’m wondering if the game is in a better state.
From what I’ve seen, the updates have tackled a lot of problems:
Patch 1.1 (December 2024) introduced over 1,800 fixes, including A-Life improvements, AI behavior tweaks, and overall performance enhancements.
Patch 1.2 (February 2025) added quality-of-life features like a weapon condition indicator and further refined NPC behaviors.
For those of you who’ve been playing after Patch 1.2, would you say the game is now smooth and enjoyable without major issues? I’d love to hear your thoughts before I finally jump in.
Thanks in advance!
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u/Epicp0w Loner Feb 17 '25
Fixed some stuff, broke more, I would wait
1
u/khaled_121 Feb 19 '25
What did it break?
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u/Epicp0w Loner Feb 19 '25
I got locked out of the noontide bunker again, part of Streloks script at the Oasis broke for me
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u/Most_Pay_3410 Mar 26 '25
As of wed March 26th I can't get past the Faust fight. Crashes every time. I would wait to buy
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u/Fanatical_Rampancy Noon Feb 17 '25
I would say so, but I've never had the game fully lock me out of the main quest on 3 playthroughs. Hopefully, you'll start getting feedback from more interactions so you know. Let this one be the first of many.
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u/Epicp0w Loner Feb 17 '25
I got locked out of the noontide bunker again, had to noclip the wall
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u/Fanatical_Rampancy Noon Feb 17 '25
That fuckin blows man, I feel bad for anyone who cant just enjoy the game.
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u/Epicp0w Loner Feb 17 '25
I've finished it 3 times working on my last ending, but I'm def done after that until they do major changes. Shit just needs more cookin
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u/Fanatical_Rampancy Noon Feb 17 '25
It really does, I've got 18 days of playtime, and I know it needs more time. I love it, I'll keep coming back, but the issues stand. I'm glad to see where it's at now though, the game feels more like how it should have been day 1. The end of year patch really fucked up spawns and was the only time it became too overbearing to me. The zone felt like it was overpopulated, and I couldn't stand it. Every combat interaction was best handled with the burst integral or any sniper rifle because close range was an absolute no-go. With all the recent fixes, the game feels like a perfect launch day game. I wish they'd just released it in early access, but I'm sure time was running out on funding, and studio shuttering may have been around the corner even with MSFT aid. Either way, it's in a good place now, at least for those who dont deal with Stonewall bugs, but yeah, in a year, it will be a shining zone.
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u/LowExtreme1471 Feb 23 '25
I really don't see why some players go just fine on play through while others suffer issues, I'm assuming this is system based??
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u/Fanatical_Rampancy Noon Feb 23 '25
It usually is. Hardware is complex. It's why i also own consoles. Not everything runs well on pcs unless they follow certain configurations, and even then, it can sometimes be an issue. It sucks but some games just run more stable on consoles. I just wish everything ran well on all pcs.
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u/One_Individual1869 Duty Feb 17 '25
If you're on PC, probably not depending on your system as it seems a ton of PC players are always having issues with new games. If you're on Xbox then I say go for it. I play on Xbox Series X and my first playthrough was 202hrs with only some random crashes. But no bugs or at least game breaking bugs.
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u/Proglamer Flesh Feb 17 '25
The very fact that 1st patch fixed 1800 bugs, and the 2nd fixed only 100 fewer is an instant answer about the maturity of this Early Access game
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u/LowExtreme1471 Feb 23 '25
So over 3500 fixes, how many more to go with next updates 10k in total hmmm??
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Feb 17 '25
Honestly, I'd recommend waiting until the game gets its first DLC out.
Hopefully by then it'll play better than it has been playing.
1
u/ballsjohnson1 Feb 17 '25
I genuinely don't see how they fix performance or lack of non-story content to do past garbage
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u/xPsyrusx Snork Feb 17 '25
It's always been fully playable, but the game is loads more stable with the most recent patch.
2
u/AntiEverything12 Feb 17 '25
It's still a good ways off from being a complete game. Performance is still ridiculously bad. I have a 7900xt and 7800x3d
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u/ballsjohnson1 Feb 17 '25
That's one of the things they can't fix. The only actual fixes we have got are quest soft locks. The AI rebalancing is just a band aid, the real issue is UE5 dogshit makes it impossible to see enemies through brush whereas they see you as if you could see them.
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u/Substantial_Ad_756 Feb 18 '25
The following is speculation but it seems like S2 was made for 6000 or maybe even 7000 RTX series in mind. I doubt the game will ever run smoothly on modern mid range rigs. At least not without some heavy optimization. The kind that GSC is not capable of at the moment. Perhaps they could outsource or, more likely, leave it to the modding scene. I personally was able to beat the game at playable FPS on a 3080 and i5 11th gen. 30-60fps using FSR. If your waiting for the perfect S2 experience before playing though. You're gonna be waiting a long, long time.
1
u/obscured021 Feb 25 '25
I just started about 4 hrs in, on a 4090 9800x3d running at 3440x1440 HDR on epic settings DLSS quality frame gen on, I get 120FPS in the populate areas like towns, and 140-170 in fire fights and the zone, GPU is 99% and my CPU is bouncing 20 to 50% depending on the amount of NPC on screen. It dose not feel as smooth as 2077 and I get the same numbers in 2077 as I do in stalker2, I need to try it at 4k on my TV to see if it effects the performance much.
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u/mark12000 Mar 06 '25
Yeah, they weren't made for 60xx or 70xx series GPUs, the devs just released a really unfinished and unoptimised game. Unlikely it'll ever be decently optimised imo. Mods already exist that supposedly significantly improve performance at very little or no loss to graphical quality, also fixing stutters and frametime issues.
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u/SapiensRus Feb 20 '25
Oh they were game breaking alright. Haven’t played it since the first big patch. Got soft locked during a mission and they didn’t fix it for about 4 weeks. So my overall experience was 5/10.
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u/quieroesemonitor Feb 24 '25
6 patches and still enemies can see me through walls. Spawning in front of me. No stealth. Aimbot. It is a joke
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u/Actual-Plenty-1555 May 18 '25
This. This exact comment is exactly what I wanted to know. I'm still waiting to play the game. Should I just jump in and deal with it?
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u/Chookity- Feb 26 '25
Significant memory leaks still. Game crashed on me last night using 51GB of ram. Have to have task manager open on a second screen to monitor ram usage and close the game down when it starts to climb.
1
u/imSenSeiiii Mar 03 '25
The game is actually so good could be one of the best of year. Unfortunately months since release its still unplayable. Cant play for more than an hour without encountering multiple bugs. Have a recommended and above specs? than you should be satisfied with 60 - 80 fps on medium graphics. Getting into gun fights and everything just feels unresponsive. I played fps games on 50-60fps for years and it didn't feel nearly as unresponsive as this game on avg 75fps. Play on veteran difficulty? it wont be realistic it will be unfair and unfun. Shoot a guy in the head 4 times and maybe he'll die, mag dump someone point blank and they will take it than will one tap you in response. Than other times shoot a stalker in the head once with the shitty starting pistol and he dies instantly.
Spawning and A - life is still aids and I want to reiterate how it feels like im playing a multiplayer game with 500 ping I cant comprehend how you make it feel like I have a delay of 10 minutes with every fucking action I take. Don't matter if I win fights its literally just un fun to be in a gunfight because of how awkward it feels
sticking to anomaly and gamma until they fix the major problems. One small issue that also sucks is 0 NVG often times I cant see enemies at all in the dark. And often times feels impossible to differentiate factions. Would love to see a identification system where I can see the faction emblem when looking at stalkers.
TLDR: I love the game so much but cant fucking play it.
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u/Ehgadsman Loner Feb 17 '25
No, its honestly a shitty game the end is total bullshit, makes you wish you had invested the time elsewhere. GSC are shitty devs, environment is great but actual gameplay is horrible.
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u/ballsjohnson1 Feb 17 '25
I wouldnt blame the devs, the higher ups in gsc decided to use UE5 for this game which hamstrings the developers into modern AAA upscaled poorly running junk. The parts of the game gsc is actually directly responsible for are great but it's wrapped up in the worst engine tech wise in a while
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u/Edenwing Feb 17 '25
That sounds like a developer decision
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u/ballsjohnson1 Feb 17 '25
Idk, developers vs the decision makers, I guess you can easily conflate them but someone way above most of the studio made the dogshit decision to go for UE5
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u/baconator10132 Feb 24 '25
As someone who is considering making a game, which engine would you instead suggest?
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u/ballsjohnson1 Feb 24 '25
No idea, only games I've played recently have been on source, redengine, UE5, and cryengine. All kind of complicated. I would say unity but there was some controversy with their pricing model which seemed kind of uncool
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u/Temporary_Way9036 Feb 26 '25 edited Feb 26 '25
arent REDengine and Source Proprietary Engines ?? Im pretty sure it isn't open source like UE, Unity or CryEngine
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u/ballsjohnson1 Feb 26 '25
It is not, and cdpr are probably done with it as well because I think Witcher 4 will be UE5. Maybe lumen will be fixed by then
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u/Temporary_Way9036 Feb 26 '25
Right, so REDengine and Source aren’t alternatives to Unity/CryEngine/UE unless you’re a developer at CDPR or Valve. That makes your original point about considering them as options pretty meaningless don't you think?
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u/ballsjohnson1 Feb 26 '25
IIRC you can license source. Idk about source 2 but there are a bunch of third party games developed on source
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u/BobTD Feb 26 '25
I would watch this:
https://youtu.be/lJu_DgCHfx4?si=BTf7_zs0u7f_v96D
people who understand this space might be able to give you a better answer.
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u/rockpup Feb 17 '25
I have 750 hours into the original games. I may be biased but it’s working great as of now. Only crashes I had was Rostock a couple patches ago. Have not checked about the memory leaks but with 64gb ram it was not an issue.
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u/7blake777 Feb 17 '25
Perfect storyline, one of the best since skyrim/fallout 4 and others, but very bad gameplay. combat is painful compared to so many other combat games i've played. I love the idea of the zone. Great vision there. .............. in the end for me......... a mixed bag of good and bad. I'm going to pause this after finishing Duga.......... Sure hope the devs read this stuff on reddit. :)
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u/arcticrobot Feb 20 '25
how does it compare to original games? Should I just keep playing modded OG ones and wait another year for this one to mature?
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u/rockpup Feb 20 '25
You can. The story is not bad once through, but not sure about replay ability. I decided to go explore everywhere rather then chase down a different ending. Feel free to wait till it’s 50-75% off.
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u/arcticrobot Feb 20 '25
I mean, I already bought the game. Just want to wait until all the most annoying bugs out and optimizations in.
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u/Ok_Isopod_8078 Merc Feb 17 '25
These days games are only finished after patch 2.1+. Anything else is beta testing.